Italy has a new president in the form of Sergio Mattarella, a 73-year-old constitutional judge from Sicily. Mattarella was elected to the role in the wake of the retirement of Giorgio Napolitano, who had…

Giorgio Napolitano, Italy’s 89-year-old president, has resigned from the office he has held for nearly a decade. His departure will prompt a secret ballot among parliamentarians to replace him. But this…

Even Angela Merkel now seems to agree that austerity has run its course. When Italy’s prime minister, Matteo Renzi, together with other European leaders, led a fresh charge against the ill-fated policy…

In Italy, as elsewhere, elections for the European parliament have always tended to be “second order”. This means that voters see them as less important than the “first-order” elections for the national…

Three weeks can be an awfully long time in politics. Last Thursday, Matteo Renzi, the new leader of Italy’s Democratic Party (PD) – the largest member of the country’s ruling coalition – announced that…